SPACE — Something in outer space has violated the laws, namely the laws of physics. Astronomers call the lawless object an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), which emits about 10 million times more energy than the sun.
That amount of energy violates the Eddington limit law of physics, which determines how bright something of a given size is. If an object breaches the Eddington boundary, scientists believe it will explode itself, to smithereens. “However, ULX regularly exceeds this limit 100 to 500 times, leaving scientists baffled,” NASA said in a statement.
New observations from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.
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NuSTAR looked at the universe in high-energy X-rays, and confirmed that one ULX, designated M82 X-2, was shining too brightly. Previous theories suggested that extreme brightness could just be some kind of optical illusion, but the new research shows that the M83 X-2 is not an optical problem. It has been confirmed, the ULX has defied Eddington’s limits.
Early astronomers believed that ULXs could be black holes. However, M82 X-2 proved that it is the object known as a neutron star. Neutron stars are the core, the remains of stars like the sun that have died. Neutron stars are so dense that the gravity on their surface is about 100 trillion times stronger than Earth’s. This strong gravity will cause any material that is pulled to its surface to explode instantly.
“A marshmallow (candied) dropped on the surface of a neutron star will be hit with the energy of a thousand hydrogen bombs,” said NASA.
The new study finds that M82 X-2 consumes about 1.5 Earth-sized amounts of matter each year, sucked up from its neighboring star systems. When this amount of matter hits the surface of a neutron star, a super explosion occurs, which produces the extraordinary brightness that astronomers see.
The research team thinks the latest findings suggest something must have happened to M82 X-2 to defy the laws of physics and break the Eddington limit. The current idea among scientists is that the strong magnetic field of a neutron star changes the shape of its atoms, allowing the star to stick together even as it gets brighter.
“These observations allow us to see the effects of very strong magnetic fields that we could never replicate on Earth with current technology,” said lead author of the study, Matteo Bachetti.
The astrophysicist at Italy’s Cagliari Astronomical Observatory said the discovery proves the mysterious beauty of astronomy. “This is the beauty of astronomy. We can’t really do experiments to get quick answers, we have to wait for the universe to show us its secrets.”
Sumber: Live Science
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